Stripping UK citizenship by stealth

Despite
official denials, evidence has emerged that the Home Office has deliberately waited
until UK citizens it plans to deprive of their citizenship have left the
country. This requires no judicial approval—and greatly hinders any appeal.

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The Bureau of Investigative
Journalism has found evidence that the UK home secretary, Theresa May,
deliberately waited for a terror suspect to leave the country before revoking
his British citizenship.

The move, described by the suspect’s
lawyer as an abuse of the minister’s powers, followed the advice of a Home
Office official. He wrote to May: “When [the suspect] leaves the UK, he should
be deprived of his British citizenship.” In a witness statement presented to
the Court of Appeal, the official explained to the home secretary that waiting
until the suspect, referred to in court as L1, had gone abroad voluntarily
before removing his citizenship enabled her to avoid having to deport him,
which could have led to him remaining in the UK for “a period of years” while
he fought legal appeals.

The revelation flies in the face of a
statement by the security minister, James Brokenshire, addressing
MPs earlier
this week in a Westminster Hall debate about an amendment to the Immigration
Bill. He said: It is true that people have been deprived while outside
the UK, but I do not accept that it is a particular tactic. It is simply an
operational reality that in some cases the information comes to light when the
person is outside the UK or that it is the final piece of the picture,
confirming what has been suspected. In other cases, we may determine that the
most appropriate response to the actions of an individual is to deprive that
person while they are outside the UK.

Stateless

The current laws allow the home secretary
to remove the citizenship of any dual national—including those born inside the
UK—without warning or judicial approval. Since these were passed in 2006, research
by the bureau has established that 40 orders have been issued. Now, May is
seeking an amendment to the bill that would allow her
to strip UK nationality from
naturalised or foreign-born individuals, even if they have no other
nationality, effectively rendering them stateless.

The home secretary often signs
exclusion orders at the same time, preventing the individuals from returning to
the UK. This means that those affected—and sometimes their families too—are
stranded overseas, lacking the protections of British citizenship as they fight
appeals that can stretch for years.

L1 came to the UK from Sudan as an
asylum-seeker in 1991 and became British in 2003. The process of removing his
citizenship dates back to the Labour government. The Court of Appeal judgmentin July 2013 shows that in mid-2009,
while he was in Sudan for the summer, the Home Office was at an “advanced
stage” of planning to remove his UK nationality. But the plan was shelved, he
having returned to the UK before the notification was dispatched. He does not
appear to have been charged with any crime or put under any Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures and remained at liberty for the next
10 months, before leaving again in July 2010 of his own volition.

Four days later, the home secretary
issued notification that his citizenship was to be revoked. This left L1
stranded in Sudan. His wife, also Sudanese, lost her right to remain in the UK and
his four children—all British citizens and all aged under 10 at the time of the
order—are effectively exiled too. L1's lawyers claim the home secretary's decision to wait until he was
out if the country was an abuse of her powers, as it “appeared to constitute a
deliberate manipulation ... for the
purpose of obstructing [L1's] statutory right of appeal or making it more
difficult to exercise”, as Lord Justice Laws noted last year in his written
judgment.

The Home Office told the bureau it did
not comment on individual cases. It has previously declined to disclose the
number of UK citizens stripped of their nationality while abroad, on grounds of
“national security”. In a statement that closely resembled those provided
on at least four previous occasions, a spokeswoman said: “Those who threaten
this country's security put us all at risk. This government will take all
necessary steps to protect the public. Citizenship is a privilege, not a right,
and the home secretary will remove British citizenship from individuals where
she feels it is conducive to the public good to do so.”

She also denied that the department
had a policy of waiting until individuals were outside the UK before removing
their citizenship. But research by the bureau has further found that of
the 18
individuals it has identified who have had their UK nationality removed since 2006 at least 15
were known to be abroad when the orders were issued. Mohammed Sakr and Bilal
al-Berjawi were killed in
US drone strikes in
Somalia. Mahdi Hashi was rendered
to the United States where
he is awaiting trial in a high-security jail.

Due process

Speaking in the parliamentary debate,
the Labour MP Diane Abbott noted that debate around citizenship-stripping
often failed to presume the innocence of individuals who had not faced
criminal charges. “We are talking about terror suspects. Nowadays in
Parliament, saying that someone is suspected of terrorist activity is enough
for the political class to assume that that person does not deserve due
process,” she said.

A lawyer who has represented Sakr,
Berjawi and Hashi, and one other individual referred to in court as Y1, told
the bureau: “All four had their notice [of deprivation of citizenship]
sent to them while they were out the country and with all four there were
serious problems getting legal instructions to them to appeal against this
stripping. It’s extremely difficult when they are outside [the UK]. The process
of obtaining legal aid takes months and only very few lawyers are able or
willing to work for free.”

The security minister also told MPs
that British suspects who had their nationality stripped under the new plans might
have the right to remain in the UK. Suspects subjected to new orders being
proposed by the home secretary could stay in Britain until “they have acquired
another nationality”, he said. Brokenshire added that individuals made
stateless under new legislation while in the UK would have the opportunity to
seek a second nationality before facing extradition.

“Some [suspects] may be able to
acquire or reacquire another nationality. In those cases where the individual
has been deprived [of their citizenship] while in the UK we would seek to
remove that individual from the UK once they have acquired another
nationality,” he said. “Where appropriate we could regularise a person’s
position in the UK by granting limited leave, possibly with conditions relating
to access to public funds and their right to work and study.”

Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda,
questioned whether rendering people stateless would benefit security: “Potentially,
the only countries that would offer nationality to a person reckoned to be a
suspected terrorist would be countries where we probably would not want that
person to end up, because they would by definition be countries that sponsor
terrorism.” But Brokenshire insisted:

‘We recognise the need to avoid
statelessness and are committed to maintaining our international obligations.
However, we do not believe that that should be at a cost to the national
security of the UK.”